Metaphor, motif, and the moment : form and human relationships in Laurence Stern's Tristram Shandy, James Joyce's Ulysses, and John Barth's Lost in the funhouse /
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| Other Authors: | , , , |
| Format: | Thesis Book |
| Language: | English |
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1985.
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| Online Access: | Link to ProQuest copy Link to OAKTrust copy |
| Abstract: | Without defining another subgenre of the novel, this study calls the centripetal/centrifugal, open-ended forms of Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, James Joyce's Ulysses, and John Barth's Lost in the Funhouse, encyclopaedic narrative, a form which blends Greco-Roman narrative for the eye with Judeo-Christian narrative for the ear. By drawing upon the symbols, images, and typologies found in the Bible's and Kabbalah's archetypal father-son motif, each artist blurs the narrative boundaries between irrational man's timeless quest to know self, other, and another; and rational man's timebound quest for knowledge. Spanning the abyss between voice and print, each writer-protagonist and his reader get doublecrossed with each other, with life's embeddedness, and with a protean, ambiguous sign system. The result is a tragi-comic, yet mysterious and serious, handing over of narrative traditions, father to son. The writer-reader team reverses life's irreversibles by traveling via neqativa, learning in the process that unselfish love triumphs over all things. Due to each artist's transformational, twoness-threeness rhythm, each re-reading generates from within itself, more possibilities for new narrative, a form equivalent to Hebraic Midrash. Yet, despite surface pyrotechnics, by letter and by number each work's profusion of metaphors in motifs spiraling out from a nexus of energy radiation adds to the mystery surrounding each form's warmly human and loving family relationships. Form and human relationships cooperate to produce a satisfying reading experience. |
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| Item Description: | "Major subject: English." Typescript (photocopy). Vita. |
| Physical Description: | 2 volumes (ix, 349 leaves) ; 29 cm |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (leaves 335-345). |